Dead Souls

by Michael Laimo

  He went inside.

  He tottered unevenly across the wood floor, stepping over the painted circle as he approached the crib.

  Hands on the edge of the crib, he peered down, that damn lasting image of Daniel interrupting the ritual making him want to feed his anger. Sweat jeweled from his brow. His jaw clenched tightly. His head pounded furiously.

  Wearing only a diaper, the baby slept in fitful silence, arms and legs twitching, fingers clawing at the gauze wrapped tightly around his chest.

  Benjamin whispered, thoughts in an unexplained muddle, "What is your real purpose?" He then reached into the crib and put a trembling hand around the infant's neck.

  And began to squeeze.

  Instinctively, the baby reached up and caressed the hand grasping him.

  The soft, innocent touch of his sleeping son's hand seemed to cure Benjamin of his pain, his anger, his confusion; it dissolved from his body like a patch of soil beneath a stream of hot water. He loosened his grip, instantly aghast with his actions. I almost destroyed the finality of the ritual myself…dear Jesus. Gently, he ran his hand across the gauze wrapped around Bryan's chest, droplets of sweat plummeting from his brow and absorbing into it. Faith…she had tended to him appropriately, for the good of the ritual, and for the good of Bryan, and for that, Benjamin was instantly grateful. He took a deep breath, his anger now restrained as he came to the realization that the baby's present quiet state was not sufficient cause for retribution. He backed away from the crib, said a prayer, then quickly fled the room.

  What now, Osiris?

  He staggered downstairs and called out for Daniel again. With no answer, he ran through the kitchen, knocking over a chair as he quickly grabbed his keys from the table and bounded out the back door.

  The sun hit him hard in the face—about as hard the screen door slamming against the side of the house—blinding him as he tripped down the five porch steps. Head pounding again, Benjamin brought his hands up and shielded his eyes from the glare, seeing Pilate's dark form pulling hard against his leash, barking and growling ferociously. The dog, enraged since noon, remained only inches away from Benjamin, paws digging trenches into the soft earth, jaws snapping up and down, eager for a piece of his leg. He gazed fearfully at the once gentle, loving black lab, foam hurtling from its jaws, eyes wet and ablaze with mad fury.

  In a panic, Benjamin backed away, tripping over a shovel that had been left out. Damn that boy! He landed solidly on his rear, breath escaping his lungs in a solid umph. Wild rage immediately erupted in him. He scrambled to his knees. His mind barked crazy orders at him, and he listened intently to its demands.

  The dog strained, hissing between its growls, eyes red and bulging and seeking attack upon the master of its house.

  Benjamin stood.

  He shoved the keys into his pocket, then grabbed the soiled wooden handle of the shovel.

  Firmed it up good and tight in his grip.

  The dog leaped crazily, pulling ferociously on its tether, the rusted handle to the basement well screeching as the screws holding it in place began to loosen.

  Benjamin raised the shovel back over his shoulder. With strong-minded silence, he ran at Pilate, head down, the shovel blindly cutting through the air. The flat of the blade connected with the dog's shoulder, driving it away from the steps. The dog yelped, turned half-heartedly, growled.

  Benjamin raised the shovel again, hit the dog in the ribs. Raised the shovel, hit the dog on the tail. Raised the shovel, hit the dog on the back.

  Like a rabbit, Pilate cowered against the foundation of the house, whimpering, paws groping the earth, its head lowered to ground level in an ineffective attempt to avoid its attacker. A puddle of urine seeped out from below its hunkering torso.

  The anger in Benjamin was alien to him, forbidden, and it begged him to rain more blows down upon the dog. He stood in position, breathing heavily, waiting for Pilate come at him, the shovel poised for another strike. But the dog remained motionless, wheezing raspily, the deep, bloody slash in its midsection evidence of a punctured lung or kidney.

  Benjamin decided not to persevere. He grinned, absorbed with feelings of triumph and the desire to wallow in victory. He dropped the shovel and paced away, applauding his decision to let the dog die slowly and painfully.

  As Pilate fidgeted and cowered, Benjamin circled around the side of the house, stopping momentarily only to gaze down at his hands and clothes, now spattered with the dog's blood. He wiped his hands on his shirt, admiring the dark splotches they made. He then circled around the front of the '73 red Ford pickup parked in the gravel driveway, looking down briefly at his shoes, both of which had thick smears of blood across the toes. He opened the driver's door and slid in behind the wheel, his palms sticky on the hard plastic. This feeling acted as a reminder of the special event that had just transpired. He took a series of deep calculated breaths, his anger toward the dog subsiding now—not fading away completely, but diverting itself from one obstruction to the next. A surge of euphoria rained down on him, and he felt the urgent need to press on.

  He started the truck and turned on the radio. From the speaker, riding a wave of static, the message from Osiris came, the voice distant and tinny, but recognizable: Benjamin Conroy…do not let anyone hinder your attempt to complete the ritual. A loud squelch followed, and then country music filled the pickup's hot, rank interior.

  Benjamin grinned, riding the sudden wave of elation consuming him. He closed the door and backed out of the driveway, feeling calm and unafraid now that he knew Osiris was offering a sense of guidance and forgiveness. The tires kicked up a shower of gravel as he pulled out into the road and sped away en route to the only place he knew he could pray peacefully to God—to Osiris—for salvation.

  Daniel turned the corner of the street where he lived, guided only by his instincts and his will to live. He'd lost a good deal of blood from the knife wound in his belly, the waistline of his pants soaked deep red. The entire way home, he kept looking over his shoulder, looking for Mack and his gang, looking for any set of questioning eyes, but did not see anyone. Now, as he lumbered toward the house, he saw his father driving away, heading in the opposite direction, the tires of the pickup kicking up a hurricane of dirt and dust. Lightheaded and foggy, Daniel reeled down the driveway and into the backyard—no one, not even Benjamin, was ever permitted to enter the house through the front door; this would soil up Faith's nice faux Persian rug and cause a groundswell of turbulence—where he collapsed in agony alongside Pilate. He wrapped his blood-stained arms around the dog's trembling body, searching for comfort. For a moment he leaned back a few inches and gazed at the dog's matted fur, worried that all the blood had come from the knife wound in his own belly. But fatigue quickly claimed him from his concerns, and he leaned back down against the dog and closed his eyes, allowing darkness to take over.

  Faith pulled herself up to the toilet and vomited again. Crying. Spitting. She prayed to God that it would end soon, and thought it might for a moment. But then she heaved again, and something big and solid came up out of her.

  Something red, and wet, and organic that made a loud plop as it fell into the toilet.

  It took Elizabeth great pains to wait until her father had gone downstairs before masturbating again. All morning, following the ritual, unexplainable urges overwhelmed her: an unstoppable force of pleasure that begged to be reckoned with. No matter how many times she brought herself to orgasm, she felt an all-consuming need to continue. On and on she went, like a machine on an assembly line, alternating fingers and palms and even using her wrists to massage her breasts, her vagina. The moment her father had entered the room, she managed to cover herself before he caught sight of her in the act, and the entire time she felt as though she would implode from not being able to delight herself; he'd only been in there for about six minutes (she'd counted the seconds in an effort to distract herself), making this the longest amount of time she'd gone this morning without an orgasm.


  But now, all the masturbation…it'd lost its glamour. It had stopped fulfilling its promise.

  Like a junkie in need of a fix, her mind demanded that she find another means of gratification. Fast. And she felt no choice but to comply, lest she explode with extreme levels of frustration, and…withdrawal.

  Wearing only her robe and slippers, Elizabeth hurried downstairs and fled the house through the back door, so blinded by a need for pleasure that she never saw her brother and her dog lying in a pool of blood alongside the basement doors.

  Bryan Conroy dreamed, and although his one-year old mind didn't truly comprehend much of what he'd experienced, he knew that he was in pain, and that the pain had triggered something in him, and it made him see. And what he saw was a large individual, just like those who fed him and bathed him. And this individual was looking down at him. But…it looked different than the others. This one didn't move, didn't talk or even breathe. No. It swung. Back and forth. And it made a noise that created a dull, hard pain inside his head.

  Thump…thump…thump…

  Chapter 20

  September 7th, 2005

  6:13 PM

  The bus finally pulled off the interstate. The rain had lessened to a drizzle, and through the drops on the front windshield Johnny could see the sign at the end of the turnoff: Wellfield—12 miles. The bus turned right, and Johnny's body shifted left into the empty seat next to him.

  Hours earlier, when the bus left Grand Central Station, it had been filled to capacity. But after stopping in Boston, it'd dropped off about eighty percent of its passengers—college students, most of them, wearing their fraternity and sorority sweatshirts, lugging knapsacks bursting with textbooks. Had Ed and Mary gone the route of most other parents, then he too would have been off to school now that the fall season was session.

  The general environment in the bus was thick with one-dimensional conversations, about who fooled around with who, what classes were being offered, etc, etc. Johnny had been fortunate enough to have a quiet unassuming man in the seat next to him who was as interested in striking up a conversation with Johnny as he was with him. The man, after a two hour nap, got off in Boston with all of the college kids. The bus stood pat for about fifteen minutes, giving Johnny enough time to stretch his muscles and take a leak in the terminal restroom. Eight passengers got on the bus in Boston, joining Johnny and four others with destinations further north. Soon thereafter, the bus was back on the road, driving through the rain on its way toward Skowhegan, Maine, with a couple of pit-stops in small towns on the way.

  The bus rode the winding country road slowly, and Johnny was grateful to be taking in the natural scenery at this snail's pace, despite the shadows of rain and gathering darkness. It did a decent job of distracting him from the horrible truth that had become of his life: his father dead, and in all probability still hanging, the leather belt now burrowing deeply into the fat flesh of his neck, the wind pushing his swinging dead-bulk against the wall for the thousandth time; his mother, alone and wasting away by the minute in the hospital, trembling with an unexplainable fear of the future that had everything to do with her secretive past, still entirely unaware of the tragedy that awaited her at home.

  My parents…dead.

  Despite their idiosyncrasies—Mary's strict method of childrearing and her God driven principles; Ed's uncaring attitude toward him—he still loved them. They were his parents and they'd raised him to adulthood, always making certain that he had food on the table and a roof over his head.

  But now, with great dismay, he realized that none of it seemed to matter anymore. His father had committed suicide. His mother was as good as dead, terrorized by her personal demons. Not a soul would ever know he was missing, except his mother, who may or may not come to assume where he'd disappeared to.

  No question about it. The past had become history. All its previously working particulars dead and buried. Now he was well on his way to beginning a bold new life, one without Ed and Mary Petrie.

  Johnny sat up and gathered his single piece of luggage from the overhead rack as the bus pulled into the parking lot of the Wellfield Inn, on Farland Avenue. He tucked a thumb into his back pocket—a procedure that had become an excessive habit—and felt out Judson's letter: his Get Out Of Jail Free card. After fleeing the apartment (and placing an ear against the wall in the hallway to see if he could hear Ed's thumping body; he didn't), he caught the 7-train to Grand Central Station. Once there, he took out the letter and placed a collect call to Andrew Judson from a pay phone (Johnny had to conserve the forty-three dollars he’d pinched from Ed's wallet, which had been left out on the kitchen table). Judson told Johnny to go to the Greyhound terminal in ten minutes, where a ticket would be waiting for him. He was also told that the next bus to Boston would be leaving in less than an hour, and that he might need to change busses when he got there. He located the bus in the terminal, and was pleased to discover that Wellfield was on the list of as-needed stops en route to Skowhegan.

  He got off the bus, thanked the driver—an elderly bald man he never really took a look at until this moment—and stepped across the lot toward the motel's entrance. The bus hissed loudly, then shut its doors and pulled away, leaving Johnny alone and feeling vulnerable. He took a deep, nervous breath, looking up at the skies which had just begun to veil its darkness over him. In the lot next to the hotel was a Pizza Hut, which he decided to immediately visit. His food was quickly served, and he managed a few bites, but soon felt full—the restaurant was as loud as the bus had been on its way to Boston, packed with vociferous toddlers and their frustrated parents. He politely asked the waitress to wrap the rest of his dinner to go, then headed across the parking lot to the Wellfield Inn. Upon checking into his room, the girl behind the lobby counter informed him that his room was already paid in full. Judson had fronted the bill.

  Alone in his room at last, and nursing an awful headache, Johnny fell asleep on his side. His dreams went uninterrupted, filled with images of his mysterious past, of the golden pain, sharp lights, and ghostly human figures trying desperately to draw him closer into what appeared to be a huge white circle painted on the floor.

  Chapter 21

  August 24th, 1988

  3:25 PM

  At the same time Elizabeth Conroy fled in near-nakedness through the cornfields alongside her home, at the same time Faith Conroy stuck her fingers into the toilet to retrieve what appeared to be a human organ floating in the water, at the same time Daniel Conroy lay barely breathing alongside his dying dog, and at the same time baby Bryan Conroy dreamed in his crib, Benjamin Conroy pulled his pickup truck into the small dirt lot outside of his church, The Organization Of God.

  The lot was empty, of course, as was the church. He kept the doors locked at all times, except on Sundays when performing the two scheduled morning masses, and then afterwards, upon contemplating the confessions of those repenting the sins in their lives; every now and then he'd become witness to a good piece of Wellfield gossip, but for the most part, it was the same old trivial concerns over nothing.

  There really wasn't much of value inside the small church, outside of a few porcelain statues or some brass plates…but wouldn't some of the damn local politicians love to find a way to close his doors for good so the faithful parishioners could line their pockets instead? God forbid if they ever broke into his office and unlocked his desk drawers, where they would unearth the ammunition needed to bring him down. God forbid.

  He stopped the truck right up front, setting the tires into a tall patch of witchgrass. His back cracked as he got out, the sharp pain traveling up his spine into his head. He gripped his temples, an action quickly growing into habit, then slowly climbed the four wooden steps to the entrance of his church.

  Like a poised guillotine, a padlock hung from a clasp on the wooden door, the key in his hand the lever to release the blade. He shuddered as he slid the key into the lock. He turned it, then yanked it down. The clasp tore away from the wood that once hel
d it firmly in place, four wood-logged screws falling to the ground between his feet. He paused, gripping the entire clasp and lock in his hand, realizing with dismay that someone must've unscrewed it in an effort to break in. Could they still be inside? He didn't think so. They wouldn't have been able to replace the clasp into its prior position with the doors closed.

  Benjamin's guard rose up, disquiet racing through him like a shot of steam from an engine. His head ached furiously, and he jerked it from side to side, cracking the bones in his neck.

  Recognizing that he may very well have another complicated situation on his hands, he threw the lock and clasp to the ground, then pulled on the twin doors. Their rusty hinges screeched like ghosts in a haunted house. Above, a bird fluttered, and when he looked up, he saw a blackbird (the messenger?) flying away over the roof of the church.

  He entered the church. A wave of heat hit him like a palpable force, and he accepted its stale familiarity with open arms.

  The interior of the church offered nothing more than a invisible, welcoming solace, four wood-slatted walls painted white, exposed beams in the ceiling, polished pews, and an intricately-painted crucifix hanging on the wall behind the altar. Over the years, Benjamin had used only a small percentage of the weekly mass collections toward the upkeep of the structure (and it showed), with the remainder going toward the preservation of the Conroy House. An average of two thousand tax-free dollars a week…it had been more than enough to share out amongst the church, plus all five acres of farmland. Just the way he wanted it. Thank the Good Lord. Thank you Osiris.

  He paced down the center aisle, the ranks of pews on either sides of him deadly silent in their positions. Heedfully, he peeked behind each one, making certain that no one was hunkered down, awaiting the perfect moment to jump out at him.